Rick Altman’s theory about the American film musical is that in the musical, the couple is the plot. Usually the character and the plot have the relationship of parallelism. This is a key formula in Blake Edward’s film, darling Lili. The dynamic of the relationship between Major Larabie and Lili make the film dualistic, the characters changes and the plot development. Lili as an actress and a Germany spy, she has a double life. She is very tender and warm and sometimes gets jealous when going out with the Major and very calm and cynicism when she battle with Major. And sometimes the two sides of her have some coincides, so as the plot. The submerged parallelism is the basis of the structure of the film in Altman’s theory. An interesting point made by Altman is that in musical we can forgo the rules of traditional narrative analysis. We can rely less on the chronology as causality because of the dual-focus on the film. In the film Darling Lili, the development of the relationship between Lilia and Major and the happy ending between is because that the musical genre allows this to happen.

There are few songs which are repeated in the film. One of them is ‘it’s a long way to Tipperay’. First time is that Lili is trying to calm down the audience during a bombing rid on the city. Secondly, it is sung at the can-can bar by the drunken soldiers on leave. Lastly it appears when Major Larabie stealing the plane of the Red Baron and proceeding to shoot and killing the unarmed Luftwaffe scrambling to their planes. Another one is ‘i will give you three guesses’. It is first sang by Lili on the stage in a very classical way. Because of the suspicions of Suzette and witness of the dance by the stripper, she sang it in a more lyric way later. The repeating of the songs promotes the development of narrative and shows the changes of characters.